Lycopene, with molecular formula of C40H56, presents in plasma and other human tissue. The plasma level of lycopene is 2.5 times higher than β-carotene and 7.5 times higher than α-carotene, which can prove the importance of lycopene in human defense system.
Recent studies have shown an anti-oxidative role of lycopene in human body. When compared with β-carotene and vitamin E, lycopene may be the most carotenoid quencher of singlet oxygen, being 100 times more efficient in test tube studies of singlet-oxygen quenching action than vitamin E. Still other epidemiological studies point out that lycopene can significantly enhance resistance to LDL oxidation and therefore prevent human suffering from arteriosclerosis. These suggest that lycopene is helpful in prevention of cardiovascular disease such as myocardial infarction and cardiopathy.
Since lycopene is a powerful antioxidant, it is useful to anticancer and fighting against cardiopathy. However, human body cannot synthesize lycopene which have to be uptake from the diet. In addition, an inverse correlation has been shown between the capability of anti-free radical system and increase in age of human body. Appropriate supplement of lycopene therefore can reduce occurrence of disease and enhance vigor.
Fruits and vegetables that are high in lycopene include those in red and orange color such as tomato, grapefruit, red pepper, watermelon, guava, papaya, almond and products thereof. The fruit contains most lycopene is tomato, and the more reddish the tomato is, the more lycopene it contains. However, lycopene is mainly located inside the cell wall of the tomato, the protein tissue and the fiber tissue. It is therefore hard to be absorbed by human body. According to above reasons, even eat fresh tomato directly, it is still not easy for human body to take lycopene in.
It is general to making commercial lycopene food products by utilizing the liposolubility feature of lycopene. These food products are used to increase lycopene absorption of human body and provide disease resistance. There are even many related patent about this subject matter.
Furthermore, no matter lycopene and β-carotene are reported to be able to protect human lymphocytes from be damaged by free radical such as NO2, the most common toxin in air pollution and smoking. The NO2 resistant effect of lycopene is at least two times of that of β-carotene. A lycopene supplement is therefore absolutely helpful to air pollution or secondhand smoke issue.
Considering the above-mentioned benefits of lycopene for human body and limited amount and speed of extraction, the way to extract a great quantity of lycopene with high speed and make it totally absorbed by human body is actually a great issue for biotech entrepreneur. There are many patents, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,530,189, 5,429,939 and 5,304,478, disclose needed gene sequences for gene recombination to synthesize lycopene. Transferring these sequences into bacteria will enable them to generate lycopene with high purity. However, there is still no patent about mutated bacteria capable of lycogen.